Timeline
721.M41 The Blood Ravens Space Marines answer a distress call from a planet called Tartarus, under attack from an ork invasion. Captain Gabriel Angelos leads the operation, marshalling his Brothers and the Tartaran PDF to fight back the Orks and give the local populace enough time to be evacuated. Complications develop when a number of Chaos items are located, leading Angelos to believe that the invasion of Tartarus may consist of more than meets the eye. As the ork assault worsens, the operation is complicated further by the arrival of the mysterious Inquisitor Toth, who brings news that a warp storm is coming and that the remaining Space Marines must flee before it engulfs Tartarus. Determined to find and eradicate the presence of Chaos, Angelos ignores the order and presses on with Inquisitor Toth in tow. He is soon surprised by another presence on Tartarus, however: The enigmatic and deadly Eldar. After fighting them off, Angelos uncovers the full extent of the invasion of Chaos on the planet--they have been using the orks to distract the Imperial forces, buying themselves enough time to uncover a long-buried artefact of mighty daemonic power. The conflict becomes a race against time for Angelos and his Space Marines to stop the forces of Chaos from using the artefact before the warp storm traps all of the warring parties on the planet together. Finally, the battle comes to a head on Mount Kadar, where Marines and Eldar engage the Chaos Marines in the middle of their ritual while the few remaining loyal PDF keep the orks busy at the foot of the mountain. Finally, the enemy is driven away, the daemonic prison destroyed. But all is not how it should be... 729.M41 The Cadian 412th lands on Lorn V, a planet lost to the forces of Chaos. After securing his beachhead, General Sturnn begins his mission to recover a damaged Titan, fighting to the center of the capital city of Talorn, unknowingly being assisted by Farseer Taldeer of Ulthwe. Meanwhile, Chaos and ork forces battle over supremacy for the planet, not knowing that the Imperium has landed in their very midst. After the capture of the city itself, however, they form an unlikely alliance, deciding to take down the Guard together. An Ultramarines Thunderhawk carrying a new crew for the Titan is shot down, prompting the Cadians to launch a rescue operation, plowing through enemy lines. They are helped a second time, however, by the eldar, still keeping themselves low-key. Chaplain Varnus and his Ultramarines defeat a Bloodthirster, rejoining the Cadians and making their way back to Talorn. Meanwhile, the eldar accidentally reveal themselves, bringing Warlord Gorgutz's hordes down on their heads. Desperate, they contact the Cadians and find refuge at a local Guard outpost, where the 412th holds the greenskins off. Afterwards, Taldeer informs Sturnn of the true threat on Lorn V; necrons, deep below the surface. The webway they have can indeed defeat the mechanical nightmares, but only in a specific place; the Titan's resting grounds. Angry at having been rebuffed, the Forces of Disorder camp outside the Guard's psychic shield, forcing the Imperial forces and Eldar to fight through them. Midway, the Farseer orders her troops to destroy a Cadian base, effectively ending the alliance, before fighting past the shield, leaving the Imperials stranded outside. The Farseer sets up the webway assembly, fighting off orks, necrons and Chaos Marines before finally being assisted by Sturnn's Kasrkin. squads and the Titan's weapons. The webway eliminates the necrons, but the Titan overloads, killing the Cadians inside the shield and vaporising everything in the camp. Taldeer escapes, lamenting that while they had to double-cross the Imperials, at least some of them survived, and the necrons are destroyed. 742.M41 'The Dark Crusade' The Tides of War The Necron tomb world of Kronus, originally an Imperial colony conquered by the Tau during the Damocles Gulf Crusade, awakens. Farseer Taldeer of Craftworld Ulthwe lands on the planet, pursued by the remnants of the Cadian 412th and their new commander, General Lukas Alexander. Upon discovering the Hellstorm cannon of a Titan, Segmentum Command orders Alexander to retake Kronus for the Imperium, bestowing him the Honorary title of Governor Militant. Combining with four other Cadian regiments, Alexander remakes the 412th into the 1st Kronus Liberators, setting out to take Kronus. The Eldar Takes Stock Taldeer sets down far to the north, watching as the Guard do battle with the Necrons, with limited success. Determining that the Imperials cannot be trusted to eliminate the nightmare, Taldeer decides to take out the Guard and Tau as well as the mechanical horrors, and sets out to combat them. The Blood Ravens on the March The Blood Ravens land in an old, abandoned fortress to find it chock full of relics of their chapter, revealing much of their long forgotten past. The Blood Ravens declare the planet to be Purged, and order the Imperial Guard off world. Citing his orders from Segmentum Command, Alexander refuses and digs in around his base in Victory Bay. Remorsefully, Brother-Captain Davian Thule strikes quickly, trying to neutralize the Governor with minimal Imperial casualties. This is not the case, however, as both sides take heavy losses in the besieging of Victory Bay. At the end, the Guardsmen overload the power core of the Hellstorm cannon in a last ditch endeavor to kill the Space Marines. Though failing, the Blood Ravens take good care of the surviving Guardsmen, evacing them and tending to their wounded as well as honoring the dead respectfully. With the Imperial Guard now out of harm's way and the brief spat over, Captain Thule turns to the rest of the world. The Tau Offensive Shas'O Kais, commander of the Tau forces stationed on Kronus, had gotten wind of the Imperial presence even before his scans and scouts confirmed that the Imperial Guard and Space Marines were on the world, as well as a few other aliens. Realising the need for immediate retaliation, the Shas'O orders his Hunter Cadre to begin combat operations against all other forces on Kronus. Backed by human Gue'seva and Kroot and Vespid auxiliries, the Tau strike out at numerous targets, including the Necrons, Imperials and the orks on the planet, capturing several important strategic zones, most noteworthy of all being the spaceport near Victory Bay. The WAAAGH! Begins! Having been forced on the run by his defeat on Lorn V, Warlord Gorgutz 'Ead 'Unter lands on Kronus with the remnants of his last warband. Rallying the local ork population, he charges into the fray, spitting lead and sawing limbs. After capturing much of the desert on the southwest corner of the super-continent, Gorgutz found his attemtps to break out rebuffed by the Tau, who controlled a series of canyons to keep the greenskins trapped and bomb them with superior firepower, limiting the number of troops needed to fight Gorgutz's horde. Angered at being cornered, Gorgutz pushed through the swamps of the Green Coast, only to run into the legions of Chaos, who were already steadily infecting the planet with their foul magicks. Eliphas' Encroachment Dark Epostle Eliphas the Inheritor had been attracted to the enormous swarm of warp energy on Kronus, and decided to turn it into a demon world to redeem himself for the Dark Gods after a century trapped in the Basilica of Torment. The orks were the first problem, but he was forced to turn south again as first the Imperial Guard, then the Blood Ravens stalled his advances north, and the Necrons on the Thur'Abis Plateau continued to spread. Deciding to cut out the middle man, Eliphas infiltrates a battalion of his best warriors through the deserts around the city of Aradash, the Tau's capital, and lays siege to it, killing the Etheral Aun'el Shi'ores, breaking the back of the Tau's offensive and forcing O'Kais to abandon the planet as the Tau's city is ransacked by Chaos. Eliphas enacts an extensive campaign of propaganda directed at the false beliefs of the Tau, all intended to please Lorgar, the Primarch of the Word Bearers, who is said to hate inbelievers and false idols most of all. Death's Doom The Necrons, while not known to be very speedy, were especially plodding in the war on Kronus. They met with minimal results against the Imperial Guard, holding their lines but making no effort to strike back. That all changed when the Blood Ravens discovered that a Guard artillery barrage had cracked open the Thur'Abis Plateau, and a strike force was sent in, led personally by Captain Thule, to deliver a plasma bomb and destroy the necrons once and for all. The final assault on the Thur'Abis Plateau became a thing of legends for the Blood Ravens. Descending into that sepulchural underworld, the Battle Brothers must have felt cut off from the Emperor's Light altogether. Nevertheless, they fought with all the courage and steel of the Imperium's finest, bringing holy fire to the enemies of all life. Those Brothers who emerged from that Charnal underworld marked their armors with a small emblem of an elongated skull, emblematic of their Necron foes. The 2nd Company, which had contributed most of the forces sent into Thur'Abis, would add the Necron skull to its heraldry and adopt the motto "Victory over Death." It is said that Captain Thule himself duelled personally with the Necron Lord while his Brothers planted the plasma bomb and armed it to destroy the dark enemy. Taldeer Makes Her Mistake Though no longer obligated to remove the Necrons, Farseer Taldeer remained on Kronus, striking out at the orks, Space Marines and Tau, becoming a nuisance in her own right. "No rock" she said "Can be left unturned while the threat of the Necrons still exists." When the Tau fell to Chaos and the greenskins charged up the coast, the eldar beat them back into the desert, further frustrating Warlord Gorgutz but providing just the battle the orks were looking for. Deciding the Blood Ravens were the greater threat, Taldeer struck while Thule's forces were recovering from their siege of the Thur'Abis Plateau, nearly reaching the Blood Raven's fortress before suddenly finding themselves on the defensive from three sides. The orks, Chaos Marines and Blood Ravens all struck at once, and though they fought with each other over the mountains of Tyrea, their combined encirclement prevented Taldeer's escape. With her webways sealed off and the Blood Ravens at the gates, she strode to her death as they gunned her down in retribution for the trickery they had suffered on Tartarus and Rahe's Paradise. Gorgutz's WAAAGH! Now they were released and free to cause havoc, Gorgutz did just that, charging across the deserts and attacking both the Blood Ravens and Word Bearers. With almost casual disregard, Eliphas mistakenly flicked the orks aside to focus on his Imperial kin. By contrast, Thule decided it was time to start working the two sides' bloodthirstiness against each other. By using the abandoned Guard fortifications, he established a defensive line, effectively halting the progress of both factions into the north. Within days, the spaceport was under the banner of the Imperium, and the Blood Ravens were committing offensive strikes on every occaison. Meanwhile, Eliphas and Gorgutz threw themselves at each other, both eager to spill blood, and a devastating battle erupted all down Kronus' southern coastline. A Dual Strike Thule finally formed a plan to go on the offensive. While he still had men hunting down eldar in Tyrea and others scouring Aradash clean of the taint of both the Dark Gods and Tau xenos, he knew there weren't enough Battle Brothers to finish the job one at a time. Both the orks and the hordes of Chaos had grown so enormous, they almost covered the southern part of the continent. But Thule also knew that the removal of the beast's head would cause the body to wither and die. Orks were fractious, and Chaos just as much. So he planned to use the spaceport to ferry the few remaining battle brothers he had left not manning the trenches and stage two assaults at the same time. One on Gorgutz's camp, and the other on the Deimos Peninsula, Eliphas' stronghold. It was quite ambitious, and if it failed Thule would have had to pull back to his fortress and try to make a new plan. Fortunately, it was exactly what was needed. Scouring the Peninsula The Blood Ravens' assault on the Black Temples of the Deimos Peninsula replayed the tragic battles of the Horus Heresy. Once again, Space Marine fought Space Marine, one side holding true to the Emperor's Light, the other fallen into blackest heresy. The Blood Ravens faced this battle with zeal, anxious to bring down those who had betrayed all they stood for. Though outnumbered at least sixty to one and hopelessly outmatched by the foul sorceries of the Word Bearers, Thule knew these brave warriors would face the coming fire with stoicism, courage and honor. In the end, the Blood Ravens weathered the assault of demons and traitors alike, closing the warp gate that was feeding the heretical army and bringing down the fiendish Black Apostle who led it. As for the desecrated temples and foul shrines that dotted the landscape, the librarians of the chapter catalogued and recorded all their contents. They then undertook the safe transport of these black artifacts to their Librarium, where they could be safely destroyed. The corpse of Eliphas was never recovered or disposed of. Bringing Down the Warlord As they had on Tartarus, the Blood Ravens cut with surgical precision into the heart of the ork horde on Kronus. The hardened Space Marines who were sent into the depths of the Green Coast answered the numerous waves of orks with bolter fire, standing proud like true soldiers of the Imperium. The swamps ran red with the blood of orks as camp after camp fell to the Blood Ravens' purge, too caught up in their fratricidal conflicts to notice the greater threat in their midst, causing a complete collapse in the integrity of their massive force. That Warlord Gorgutz managed to escape Kronus weighed heavily on Captain Thule. He surmmised, correctly as it turned out, that the ork would return to plague the Imperium again. In an effort to ensure that no other orks survived, Thule ordered a massive scorched earth campaign, burning hundreds of square miles of forest to hunt down every last ork. A Red Letter Day At the end of the two year long campaign on Kronus, the Blood Ravens stood victorious on their new relic world. With all other xenos exterminated and the rest of the loyalist Imperials evacuated off-world, Captain Thule began the search to find the lost relics that they had so valiently fought this war for. Alas, the planet itself had very little to offer, much less than the combined wealth of knowledge offered by the leftover corpses, technology and other relics from the other factions that had battled so hard for this world. Despite the shortcomings, Kronus was hailed as a major victory for the Blood Ravens. * * 773.M41 'The Kaurava Campaign' The Places Are Set It was the sudden appearance of a warp storm on the outer edge of the Kaurava system that first caught the attention of the Imperium. And not just the Imperium. After hundreds of years under the neglectful watch of the Planetary Defense Force descended from numerous Imperial Guard regiments, nearly every force in the galaxy would descend upon the planets of Kaurava, bent only on domination and victory. Three races had long dwelled in there. The PDF, enforcing the system's supposed rulers, the ork tribes of Karauva II, whom the Defense Force had never successfully put down, and the necrons, who had slept undisturbed for untold millenia beneath Karauava III. Where the Chaos Marines came from, or how, no one can say. Did the warp storm bring them or did they bring the Warp Storm? Both appeared suddenly on Karauva IV, and in an eyeblink half the system's Imperial forces were gone, killed or claimed by the madness of Chaos. In quick succession, the others flocked to Karauva. The Blood Ravens Chapter of the Space Marines descended on Karauva II, bent on finally cleansing the system, both of the orks and the Chaos Space Marines, their sworn enemies. The Tau appeared next, not far above, on one of the planet's moons. In the interests of protecting its ordered empire from the effects of human folly, the Tau came seeking to contain the warp storm, and in so doing expand their territory's border by annexing the system. On that moon, they built a mighty fortress, and there forged a space cannon capable of interplanetary devastation. Among the wastes of Karauva III, the necrons, perhaps awakened by the disruptive forces of the storm, slowly massed their lethal legions. In quick response, webway gates, long unused, flickered to life and eldar poured forth, ready to battle their dark death-dealing adversaries. Meanwhile, in the shadow of an ancient portal gate, the Dark Eldar slipped stealthily out of the murky depths of the webway. They would be like carrion birds, flying above the battlefield, and when all were weary from the fight make the battle into a feasting ground. Last to arrive, and perhaps most to be feared, were the Sisters of Battle. Holy maidens and bearers of the God-Emperor's faith, they had come to cleanse the system of corruption and filth. Their faith left them fanatical, unafraid of death and sallied to the cause. Nothing here was clean. All must be purged. Battle Royale The Blood Ravens, led by Brother-Captain Indrick Boreale, set to work immediately, chasing down orks and duking it out with the Tau. Blow after blow was exchanged, with orbital fire rained across the surface of Karauva II until blast craters and torn corpses littered the landscape. Warlord Gorgutz 'Ead'unta, having escaped the killing ground of Kronus some time before, rallied his new horde time and time again to challenge the Space Marines. A Dysfunctional Alliance The Sisters of Battle had set down on Karauva I, the planetary capital and current stronghold of the last few surviving regiments of the PDF. Though both sides were Imperial forces, the Sisters reacted harshly, establishing a quarantine across half of the main continent and forcing the Guardsmen to remain at arm's length on pain of bombardment from orbit and strafing runs from Navy Lightnings. The Planetary Defense Force was practically in ruins. With Kaurava IV in enemy hands and the other two planets turned into charnel wastelands, only remnants had managed to escape back to the PDF headquarters, and of them, none of the commanding staff survived. Most Defense Force generals had been attending a social gala on the fourth planet, and were strung up, sliced apart or blown to pieces during the invasion. Instead, a promising young commander named General Vance Stubbs rose to take command of the 252nd Karauvan Conservator regiment, the only unit that had survived mostly intact with its ten-thousand men still able to fight. The other remnants, about forty-thousand in total, were swiftly incorporated into the 252nd to form a far more formidable fighting force. When the Sisters of Battle arrived in the Kaurava System, General Stubbs knew there was only one way he and his Guardsmen would make it through alive. No victory or act of penetance could clear them of suspicion in the eyes of those Ecclisarchal zealots. Knowing he had done no wrong and unwilling to submit to Inquisitorial reconditioning, the General prepared for battle. Stubbs had initially hoped that the enemies of the Emperor would save he and his men from having to face the dreaded Sisters himself, but quickly realised he had no time to wait. Resolved to his fate, Stubbs delivered a speech to his men about defense in the view of the Emperor and righteious duty. Emboldened and knowing they had no other choice, the PDF smashed into the Sisters' quarantine zone with heavy armor blitzes, pushing the stunned zealots back for quite a ways over the continent before the maidens regrouped and fought back. The battle over the spaceport became one of the more celebrated fights of the Karauvan Campaign, as Guardsmen advanced in tight order with Chimera and Leman Russ assistance, breaking the Sisters' defensive line before hunting through the facility for survivors. With this crucial installation in their grasp, the Karauvans were quickly able to move up their operations, and Marauder bombers and Valkyrie assault carriers began their bombing runs over the rest of the planet, clearing the way for the 252nd to move forward until their reached the Sisters' bastion at the north pole. With the advantage of surprise on their side, the 252nd Regiment, though weak of will and faith, showed themselves stronger of arms and armor than the pious Sisters of Battle, breaking through the encirclement and destroying strongpoint after strongpoint until the Sisters' very sanctuary was shuddering under the guns and treads of the PDF tanks. Rather than surrender, the Sisters fought back at the top of their fortress, regardless of the fact that they were heavily outnumbered and outgunned. The siege lasted for less than an hour after that, and when it seemed as though the Guardsmen were on the verge of victory, the Sisters burned themselves rather than give up. This extraordinary feat surprised even General Sutbbs, and on congratulating his troops afterwards, he remarked that it was "certain proof that the Emperor wished the Imperial Guard to hold dominion over the Karauva system." The PDF immediately set out upon a six-week expedition to cleanse the last few remnants of the Sisters from the planet, even though the spaceport came under surprise siege. Finally, Kaurava I was held by the 252nd Regiment, and they turned their eyes to the stars. Interestingly, when the Inquisition recieved word of such a transgression, they were initially furious over the proceedings. Before they could press charges of heresy, however, their tune changed, and all three Ordos agreed that the PDF had been in the right, most especially the Ordo Hereticus. A Jungle in Flames 810.M41 'Civil War on Midgard' The planet Midgard suddenly goes into a wild orgy of violence as the Chaos infected population fight for the Dark God controlling them. Within days of the conflict's beginning, the order for Exterminatus is called by Inquisitor Callista Steele. The next week, an Ordo Malleus ship arrives with a full detachment of Grey Knights under the command of Inquisitor Lazarus. Bio-bombs are dropped, scouring the entire planet of all life.